“Redemption” [ft. SZA]

Jay Rock’s taut and wary new album Redemption is currently floating around in the churning sea of new rap music, and in danger of drowning; don’t let it. The moonlit and lonely title-track, a late-album highlight, pairs the "Top Dawg underdog” with SZA, and sounds a million pained miles away from the current Event-Rap landscape. He opens by recounting his recent motorcycle accident, and imagines if it were: “I see my funeral packed/I see some lying, some crying, and some giving dap/I see false claimers, strangers, and foes with they head in they laps.” Some of those strangers snap pictures: “Instagram a dead man’s best friend,” he cracks.

Jay Rock has always cut a mournful, ruggedly solitary figure, but “Redemption” is as purely alone as he’s ever sounded; on the second verse, he apologizes for alienating a woman who stood by him: “I should’ve went to church with you,” he confesses, touchingly. SZA’s voice bleeds hurt into the track’s corners, a whispered hint of Guy’s 1988 slow jam “Piece of My Love.” The original is well-trod territory for hip-hop, but here, the chorus melody is leached out and only the sample’s forever-receding chord progression remains. SZA pleads for miracles, but the plush beat simply fades away in response, taking her hopes and Jay Rock’s fears with it.